Today (2012) many cuboids are available as mass produced puzzles. Even more are available as 3D-prints. These makes the 3x4x4 to seem less spectacular than it is.But in 1998 any cuboid (and any puzzle with a modified mechanism) was an spectacular achievement like this.Tony Fisher created the first 3x4x4 as a transformation of a 4x4x4 Master Cube / Rubik's Revenge which received heavyweight extensions. The puzzles dimensions are: 97mm x 130mm x 130mm.The first two photos shown here were taken by Geert Hellings.

Many other creators have built 3x4x4 with different sizes as handmade cuboids since 1998. Even a pillowed variant (by Claudiu Kuharek) was presented in 2011.